Mastering Leave: Best Practices and Strategies for Effective Leave Management Implementation

Managing employee departures is a core HR activity that every company must manage. Some common doubts plague startup founders or new HR professionals. Will the sky fall if we just ignore this boring work? What are the benefits of vacation management? And anyway, what does vacation management actually mean?

So, you want to know what vacation management is all about and put this knowledge into practice? Then you are right here. Although vacation management is simple compared to many other HR practices, there is still a lot to consider. Let's dive in.

What is vacation?

You don't have to work all days to earn your salary. Vacation is a day off work that is granted in addition to the vacation days to which employees are entitled under the vacation policy.

A hundred years ago, workers worldwide had no right to paid vacation. Today, however, all countries except the United States require employers to provide employees with paid vacation and vacation time. Even in the US, 99% of companies voluntarily offer paid vacation.

Vacation or paid time off (PTO) is one of the most popular benefits after health insurance.

There are several types of vacation an employee is entitled to each year. Each state's law regulates the different types of vacation and the number of vacation days to be granted per year. Some of these types of leave can be earned, and employees can carry the credits over to the next year. Other types of leave expire at the end of the year.

In urgent cases, employees can also take leave for loss of pay (LOP) after they have used up their vacation balance. This is also known as Leave Without Pay (LWP).

Why do you need vacation management?

Vacation management is an important part of performance management and is needed for many reasons:

• For compliance with laws
• Retention of documents
• Business operations and planning
• Reporting and Analysis
• Prevention of loss of income

Need for legal compliance

Aside from providing paid leave to employees, employers must maintain proper records of paid leave provided to employees for compliance purposes.

Record Retention

Even if there are no compliance regulations, it is highly desirable to record employees' paid vacation days. Without accurate records, it is impossible to enforce and implement vacation policies.

Since paid vacation is a benefit for employees, they need transparency and detailed information about the vacation policy, entitlements, vacation balances and the exact history of transactions. Failure to do so in these areas leads to dissatisfied employees, distrust and erosion of the employer brand.

The need for records is particularly evident when it comes to full and final accounting of employees. Lack of proper record keeping or a policy for encashment of accrued, earned vacation is a recipe for disputes and disgruntled ex-employees.

Business operations and planning

In large teams, on any given day someone is on vacation. However, work is hampered when most team members take vacation at the same time.

When approving vacation, a manager must consider the roster for that day and decide whether to approve or reject it. Not knowing which team members are on vacation on a particular day can lead to wrong decisions or delays.

A solid vacation management system can also be helpful in this area.

Reports and analysis

Preparing leave reports is an important concern for both management and compliance. Without a proper absence system in place, this can become a horrific experience every month.

Tracking absenteeism and identifying leave patterns that indicate unhappy employees are tasks that a proactive HR manager should handle.

However, in order for us to derive insights from this, accurate and up-to-date information is required.

Challenges in vacation management

Without proper vacation management, a whole range of undesirable situations arise. If you encounter any of these problematic scenarios, it indicates the need for better practice.

1. A team member is not at work because he is on vacation, but the manager doesn't know about it.

2. The HR department extended the vacation without prior approval from the supervisor.

3. The customer is dissatisfied with the delayed service because the support technicians went on unplanned vacation.

4. Employees do not inform HR that they are on vacation, so vacation accounting is inaccurate.

5. The employees took far more vacation than they were entitled to.

6. The company's vacation policies are not applied uniformly to all employees.

7. Employees' vacation balance is not correct, which leads to disputes and employee dissatisfaction.

8. Approvals are delayed, causing anxiety, inconvenience and expense for the employee.

9. An employee must contact HR or their supervisor multiple times to request or approve their vacation.

All of these problems can be boiled down to these general challenges:

• Low productivity
• Bad customer support
• Inadequate vacation planning
• Low trust and low motivation of employees
• Low employee satisfaction
• Unauthorized absence from work
• Loss of sales

What is vacation management?

Vacation management is the process of managing employee vacations in accordance with company vacation policies, not only to comply with legal regulations but also to improve employee retention, productivity and employer branding. There are three major areas of vacation management:

• Development of vacation policies
• Implement and enforce vacation policies
• Routine work in vacation management

Leave Policies

Many small companies do not have written vacation policies. Without documented leave policies, it is difficult to enforce the policies and a cause of all of the problematic scenarios we discussed above.

Developing good vacation policies requires knowledge of the legal regulations relevant to your industry and location. In addition to compliance, a vacation policy must also take into account the company's interests, employee needs, and employee engagement.

Employees are entitled to many types of leave. Therefore, different guidelines must apply to different types of leave. Policies may also be different for different levels or categories of employment.

Several pieces of information are required to create a vacation policy:

• Types of vacation
• The company's weekend policy (e.g. 5-day week)
• Holiday rules for each type of holiday.
• Holiday calendar for the company

Use Icehrm's Leave Management System to change the way you handle leave. Our solution gives businesses the ability to effectively manage employee vacation time, from easy request submission to real-time tracking. Take advantage of streamlined procedures, increased worker productivity, and improved compliance. The future of leave management is at your fingertips with Icehrm; take advantage of it right now to guide your team toward a more orderly, efficient, and harmonious workplace.